Russian Garden and Park Design

Russia enters into the history of gardening much
later than any of the countries we have written about, and it is
impossible to speak of any individual cultivation before the days
of Peter the Great, in the first third of the eighteenth century.

Information is very scanty about the summer residences of the
emperors at Moscow. Up to the end of the seventeenth century we
find nothing but wooden buildings, very subject to danger from
fire. They had gardens round them in the reign of Peter the Great.
But after Petersburg was founded, there arose not only the palaces
of emperor and nobles, but gardens as well. The Tsar had seen
European gardens on his travels in Holland, England, and Germany.
He knew far better how to protect the gardens at his own home
against his barbarous troops, than how to protect those foreign
gardens and homes which he had ravaged on his travels. In 1714 he
made a great garden at the summer palace on the so-called Admiralty
Island, which was made by the River Neva with her canalised arms,
and has now disappeared. Here he and his followers adopted all the
ideas that the styles of the time had to give. Parterres with their
grand waters, cascades and playing streams, plantations with tall
espaliers. All were adorned with works by famous Italian sculptors.
Antiques were brought, for they were always to be had, while in the
park there were various summer-houses, and a bosket with fountains
illustrating Æsop’s Fables, as at Versailles, as well as a menagerie with
valuable beasts.

For the grotto which Peter made, as also for the water-works, he
engaged the great architect Schlüter of Berlin, who had left
his own home, in a state of discontent, to find a new field of
activity in the Tsar's service, but the very next year died in
Petersburg without having done anything. The French artist Le Blond
fared better, for he was at once entrusted by the Tsar with a most
important piece of work. Opposite the town, at the south of the
gulf, the Tsar had built a little house on the shore, before he was
attracted in 1715 by a beautiful spot where he built a
pleasure-castle, which he named Peterhof, This was on
a natural terrace twelve metres in height, where the hilly part of
it falls away somewhat towards the land (Fig. 523).

FIG. 523. PETERHOF, RUSSIA—THE CASCADE AND UPPER
GARDEN

Of course it was intended to rival the French Residence, and so
French artists were called in. The plans came straight from Paris,
and there was nothing to hold Le
Blond back from getting on with the castle and garden.

The great advantage here was that they did not have to concern
themselves much with underground operations. But the planting of
the vegetation was no trifling matter, and whole shiploads of trees
and plants were procured. The interior of Russia supplied elm and
maple, and we are told that 40,000 trees were brought. Then came
beeches, limes, and fruit-trees from Western Europe. Foreign
specimens were brought from the ends of the earth, and in spite of
the long winters flourished and still flourish. With these the
whole of the lower part, from the sea to the lofty terrace, was
planted and laid out as a park, with a great variety of fountains,
which marked the crossways of the main avenues.

There is one cross-road which starts from a little house called
Monplaisir, built on the strand by Peter in a pretty little garden
in the Dutch style. It leads to a second small building, and this
is named Many—another reminiscence of France. Behind the
Marly pond falls a cascade, glittering on gilded steps. The boskets
contain, among many other water-devices, some weeping trees; little
did Madame de Montespan know what an effect she would work with
that boscage which she designed. But Peter also was very fond of
fairy-tales and fantasies; in his little hermitage there was a real
“ table-be-covered,” which at the sound of a bell rose
out of the ground and vanished again. This park was divided in half
by a sort of large waterway in the middle axis of the castle (Fig.
524).

FIG. 524. PETERHOF, RUSSIA—CASCADE AND CANAL

A double cascade falls from a terrace in front of the
castle down into a wide basin. There is a grotto beside it, with
sets of seven steps in coloured marble, and on them a series of
gilt statues. In the basin is Samson on a rock, tearing open the
lion’s mouth, from which a great column of water goes up.
From here a quiet canal flows seaward, and buildings at the harbour
help the disembarking and landing from the royal ships. On both
sides of the canal there is a walk with fountains which throw
silver showers up and down upon the dark tall firs, and various
masks spurt their waters into the canal. There is a cheerful open
garden beside the cascade, and the terrace steps on either side are
decorated with dwarf trees, while on the flat there is always a
basin with beds of flowers. Above, in front of the castle, there is
an incomparable view, for right over the lower garden and the
water's edge, which so soon was covered with fine country houses
and gardens following the king’s example, the eye sweeps
right over the sea to the town with its golden domes, while far
away on the right the Finnish coast appears. Behind the castle lies
the upper garden (Fig. 523) with its fountains and the Neptune in
the middle; here all travellers praise the lovely clear waters that
the hills of Peterhof pour out in profusion. Hence proceeded wide
star-shaped avenues, passing through the park above, and meeting at
one point on the hill, whence it is possible to see all the views
skilfully and pleasingly combined.

The French artists, using the nature of the ground, cleverly
created a wonderful picture. This garden is clearly a symbol of all
Petersburg culture, which at that time was the scion of a French
stock. For western eyes there was too much gold and glitter and too
many colours used in other castles as well as in this one, in
accordance with the Russian taste and feeling. There is a story
that the French ambassador, when he first saw Tsarskoje-Selo, Queen Catherine’s
castle, exclaimed that there was nothing wanting but a case to
protect this jewel in bad weather. The short reign of the French
garden came to an end with this castle. Catherine was so modern a
ruler that she laid out her garden in the new English style, the
first one in Russia, and greatly admired. [See Garden History CD for further
information in the landscape garden in
Russia]

In all these countries of Northern Europe the art of gardening
reached its highest point in the eighteenth century. We have not
found any fine display of new ideas, but French art absorbed and
embraced within its wide boundaries much of the individual
peculiarities of the different countries, and their various changes
in taste during these hundred years. Variety was the charmed word
that led them to their pinnacle. All the same, this variety had to
be united with a definite and abiding form in the main lines. We
have seen as we went along how economic and political conditions
prepared the soil for garden development in the course of this
century.